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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (60988)	10/4/2002 9:13:10 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

I am trying to figure out why his POV is repugnant. If you tell bright students who know about relativism, that something is "just wrong" you will lose their intellectual respect. If you lay out the facts: the painful events of the holocaust, the toll it took on survivors, the national guilt of Germany, the repudiation of Hitler's genocidal actions,etc., then students will be able to come to their own conclusions. Someone evolving their own personal reason for deploring Hitler is much more powerful intellectually and morally, than just accepting "because he was BAD". That is a very naive and unsophisticated approach, and does not serve the level of development of the college student's mind. IMO

To: Neocon who wrote (60988)	10/4/2002 11:00:26 AM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

It's called free will, and the right to decide for oneself. Yes, I believe that the role of a university is to expose students to as wide a range of facts and ideas as possible and give them the tools to think their way through those facts and ideas rationally. If, given their analysis and thier value systems, they wind up preferring the Hitlerian view to the more orthodox current view, I think they have a right to do so. Just as I believe that Lindh had every right to believe as he did. What he didn't have was the right to take up arms agains the United States or its forces without first renouncing his citizenship. But as to his choice to adopt Islamic principles, to join a mosque, to travel to the Middle East for further studies, and to express his views in writing and speech, those were his absolute rights. Personally I think he was wrong, but I am absolutely not going to impose my moral and value judgments on him.